Staff + Board

Meet the Makers

STAFF

luke ayres

Luke Ayres joins Craigardan in 2019 as our first Culinary Program Manager and Head Chef. Luke received a BA in studio arts in Minneapolis. Afterward, he promptly moved to NYC and spent ten years hustling and bustling before moving to the Adirondacks in 2010 with his wife to open Green Point Foods Market & Cafe. Luke went on to become the Pastry Chef at the Lake Placid Lodge. Luke and his family live in beautiful Keene Valley.

michele drozd

Michele received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Ceramics from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University and worked under various artists including Petras Vaskys and Laszlo Fekete studying the finer points of design, mold making, and sculpture. She spent six years designing sculptural and architectural tile with tile-maker Marie Baron in Philadelphia, PA and Albuquerque, NM before traveling the world and finding her home in the Adirondack Mountains of New York. With her husband and fellow artist, Michael Intrabartola, she became intensely interested in entrepreneurialism, the revitalization of small rural towns, food and agriculture, art, education and historic preservation - and the connections between them. Three businesses and three nonprofits later, she is thrilled to now serve as executive director of such an important and timely organization. Michele was a founding board member of Craigardan.

megan moody

Megan joined Craigardan to help establish the farm component to the organization. Megan has been farming in the Northeast since she graduated from Dickinson College in 2013, where she majored in Environmental Studies and Studio Art. Before moving to Keene, Megan was based in Essex, NY working at North Country Creamery as their cafe manager and at Essex Farm working with livestock and learning about full animal butchering and slaughtering. Megan has a love for the outdoors through farming, cooking, hiking, cycling, swimming, and art and is excited to continue to explore the intersections that can take place between those, especially here at Craigardan!

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Mary Barringer

Mary Barringer has been a studio artist since 1973, making both sculpture and handbuilt functional pottery. She received a BA in art from Bennington College, and worked as an assistant to Michael Frimkess. Her work has been exhibited widely, in contexts ranging from museums and commercial galleries to craft fairs and pottery tours.

In addition to her studio practice she has taught at craft schools, community colleges, and universities including Ohio State and Ohio University, and has written and lectured on the history of ceramics. From 2004 to 2014 she was editor of The Studio Potter journal. She lives and works in western Massachusetts.

Lorene Garrett

Lorene is a native Northern Californian fortunate to have also lived in Okinawa, Italy, Taiwan, Texas, Alabama, Indiana, Tennessee and Ohio. She holds an MFA in Writing from the University of San Francisco, an MS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Dayton, and a BS in Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering from Perdu University. A decade ago, Lorene abandoned a twenty-year aerospace engineering carer to write full time and study with indigenous healers in Peru. Her articles, essays, memoir excerpts and poetry have appeared in print. A 2010 PEN Center USA Emerging Voice Fellow, Lorene is also a Pushcart Prize nominee. She enjoys working with nonprofits, is passionate about sustainable living, writing, the arts, and spiritual pursuits. Lorene currently lives and works in a green home in the Bay Area while caring for her mom.

KATE MOSES

Kate Moses is the author of the internationally acclaimed Wintering: A Novel of Sylvia Plath and the memoir Cakewalk, as well as the coeditor of two national bestselling, award-winning anthologies of essays on motherhood, Mothers Who Think and Because I Said So. A seventh-generation San Franciscan, Kate began her career in the editorial department of the boutique publisher North Point Press, where she rose to senior acquiring editor, working with writers including Wendell Berry, Kay Boyle, Evan Connell, M. F. K. Fisher, Anne Lamott, James Salter, and Gary Snyder. After five years at North Point she was named literary director of Intersection for the Arts, San Francisco’s foremost literary center, where she ran a historic reading series featuring writers including Denis Johnson, Walter Mosley, Louise Gluck, and Elena Poniatowska. During her tenure as a founding senior editor and staff writer at Salon, Kate initiated and cohosted a Bay Area women writers’ salon that eventually branched out to establish salons in London and New York; all three salons are still running and count hundreds of highly regarded writers among their memberships.

A devoted teacher and tireless advocate for writers, women writers in particular, Kate has served on the creative writing faculties of San Francisco State University, University of San Francisco, and the State University of New York Plattsburgh, the Key West Literary Seminar, Gotham Writer’s Workshop, and Hedgebrook. In 2017 she established Birds & Muses, which offers consulting, private mentorship, and editorial services for writers as well as intimate writing- intensive residencies in the U.S. and Europe. She lives in Essex, New York.

Janelle Schwartz, phd

Janelle founded the Hamilton College Adirondack Program in 2013, a place-based, semester-long immersion program that combines the interdisciplinary study of local environmental issues and their global implications with research-based fieldwork, internships, and cooperative living. It is based here in Keene, on Hurricane Rd, just around the corner from Craigardan! She continues to serve as its director, teaching and working to build a vibrant and cooperative living-learning community between students and faculty, the High Peaks region and the Adirondacks at large. Janelle earned her doctorate in literature and the history of science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and taught English literature and environmental studies at Loyola University New Orleans before coming to Hamilton College. She has published articles, essays and blogs on literature and ecology, cabinets of curiosity, pedagogy and more. Her book, Worm Work: Recasting Romanticism, came out in 2012 from the University of Minnesota Press, and one of her next research projects involves the work and life of Adirondack painter and woodsman Don Wynn. Janelle also freelances as an education consultant. She lives in Keene with her husband, baby girl, three dogs, bees, and many home projects.

David Speert, md

David is originally from Westchester County, New York. He graduated from the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, and subsequently trained in Pediatrics and Pediatric Infectious Diseases at the University of Michigan and the University of Minnesota respectfully. He was the Sauder Family Professor of Pediatric Infectious Diseases and the Head of the Division of Infectious and Immunological Diseases for 20 years at the University of British Columbia and BC Children's Hospital until his retirement in June 2017. He now lives with his wife, ceramic artist Carol Fay Stein, in Kittery Point, Maine. David is a father of 3 children and is passionate about the care for and nurturing of children in both his personal and professional lives. He is also passionate about the environment and is a student of the arts including photography and woodworking. He serves on the stewardship committee of the Kittery Land Trust in Maine and plans to devote much of his energy to woodworking, hoping to perfect the finer aspects of joinery and creative design. David is also an avid gardener and biker and a beginning but very keen knitter.

lanse stover

Lanse received his Bachelor of Fine Arts in ceramics from the Kansas City Art Institute in 1976, and his Masters in Fine Arts from the University of Colorado in 1982. He established a clay studio in Beverly, Massachusetts in 1985, and for 25 years sold his work at the major US craft shows. His work has been exhibited nationally. He was an adjunct professor of ceramics at Endicott College in Beverly, and taught adult classes at ceramics studios in the area. From 2006 to 2015 he worked with independent schools on Boston’s North Shore, developing and maintaining custom school information systems. In 2015 he moved to Keene Valley, NY, and has been building a studio there. Lanse is a founding board member of Craigardan.

brooks Townsend

Brooks was born in Mystic, CT during the height of the Watergate scandal and the end of the Viet Nam war. He sailed, hiked the Adirondacks, and learned watercolor from his paternal grandmother. Brooks was raised at Holderness School in Plymouth, NH where his father taught calculus. He took full advantage of the arts and performance buildings when school was out, and focused on photography, film, music performance and theory and Nordic skiing when school was in session. He later studied painting and photography at Hartford Art School and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In lieu of a degree, he has overcompensated with rigorous explorations of the American Civil War, quantum theory, Albert Camus, and fifty other non income-generating knowledge sets. He is the owner of Rock Maple Design, a design-build firm committed to building and restoring homes and designing and fabricating furnishings in Keene, NY.

frances WesTley, phd

Frances currently holds the title of Emeritus Professor, School for Environment, Enterprise and Development at University of Waterloo. Before her retirement in August 2017, she held the J.W. McConnell Chair in Social Innovation and was the founding Director for the Waterloo Institute on Social Innovation and Resilience at the University of Waterloo. She is a renowned scholar and consultant in the areas of social innovation, strategies for sustainable development, strategic change, visionary leadership and inter-organizational collaboration. Her most recent publications have focused on the relationship between art and science in social transformation. Frances is known for her program designs, specifically for mid-career professionals interested in social transformation. From the Masters of Voluntary Sector Leadership, designed and delivered at McGill University to her most recent program - the Social Innovation Residency, at the Banff School of Fine Arts, her work has influenced many Canadian leaders and innovators.